Father Wants Us Dead - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I enjoyed this podcast once it really got started and I got used to the presentation style. I enjoy this sort of podcast style with interviews and field work and the narration with a hint of humor. I had never heard of this case before so it was intriguing and I appreciate the amount research and investigation work done on this. I didn’t have issues hearing the guest interviews or the hosts while driving.

That said, the first episode and a half are a little slow and more of a teaser. If I weren’t driving a long trip, I might have dropped it but it did pick up later when they started to describe the family and follow a more linear timeline from there. I agree with a lot of other reviews that there is something off about the hosts’ delivery. They are clearly reading from a script (probably to avoid talking over each other and to avoid tangents and excess chatter) but they sound very unnatural and robotic like they are not actually recording together and reading the script for the first time. It is jarring. Their “field interviews” are much more natural sounding. (Epic Jersey slide!)

If you like Crime Junkies, you will like the presentation style of this podcast and these journalists. To say it could be shorter is a criticism that could be applied to most podcasts. I am a fan of the genre, but do not like teaser statements “we will tell you about this interesting thing later, not now….sometime later”. I want to be compelled to listen by the research and the narrative, not by weak rhetorical devices.

I did make it to the end and thought it was reasonably entertaining. I did not find the continued wonderment about how List could kill his family particularly useful. It was apparent early on in the podcast, that he was delusional and suffering from a significant psychological disorder.

Insane story told so thoroughly and thoughtfully. The ladies did an incredible job with each detail of this heart wrenching story!

Loved this podcast .. kept delivering from beginning to end . Easy to follow and not another true crime podcast that fills in time with unnecessary commentary. Considering listening to it all over again. Great job ladies 🥳

This podcast was so frustrating to listen to. The story is an incredibly salacious one but the circular telling of it is taken too far. Interrupting their own story lines constantly, it made the pod feel like a never-ending trailer and not satisfyingly detailed. Major questions they don’t ask, and then hard to keep track of whether they ever get answered, they do more paraphrasing of the people they interview than letting you hear those people talk. It feels like, for the 50th anniversary, they had nothing to add to the story so they tried to tell it more creatively and it’s just tedious… I’ve never heard of this murder before. After 3 episodes, I’m so tired of listening to this podcast, I’m quitting to go look the story up somewhere else.

Really wanted to like this. A story I’ve never heard of and was interested. But SO repetitive. The whole first episode could be condensed into 20 mins. And that’s true for the next two. I couldn’t get through episode three. Nothing specific, nothing super detailed. And the “we had to work so hard to get interviews, listen to all our cold calls” killing of five mins was a real turn off. Too bad - with a different presentation and more serious presenters, this could have been great!